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NEWS
- We're thrilled to announce Notebook magazine, a new biannual print-only publication dedicated to the art and culture of cinema, with original contributions by film artists, writers, curators, and archivists about a unique and eclectic array of cinematic subjects. Inside our pilot Issue 0 you'll find Apichatpong Weerasethakul reflecting on his personal journey and Wes Anderson on The French Dispatch and The New Yorker; explorations of moviegoing and odes to movie magazines; conversations between the cinema exhibitors of Milan's Cinema Beltrade and Dubai's Cinema Akil, as well as between directors Emma Seligman and Mike Leigh; movie posters from a milestone MoMA exhibition; sheet music handwritten by Nino Rota; new translations of writings by Yasujiro Ozu; and much more. This issue is printed in a limited edition and available for pre-order to MUBI subscribers only—get yours now, as they're already going fast. We hope you enjoy!
- Following their collaboration on the 2013 film Enough Said, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicole Holofcener will reunite on Beth and Don, a comedy film about a novelist whose marriage falls apart after she overhears her husband's brutally honest assessment of her work.
- To commemorate the late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who tragically died this last week in a fatal shooting on the set of Joel Souza's Rust, AFI has announced the Halyna Hutchins Memorial Scholarship Fund for female cinematographers. Donate to the fund here.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Paul Verhoeven's nunsploitation film Benedetta has a new trailer ahead of its December 3 release. Read our review of the "outrageous, bombastic, flamboyant" film here.
- The trailer for Bruno Dumont's France, in theaters December 10. The film, a satire of television news, stars Léa Seydoux as a famous journalist.
- Robert Greene's latest film Procession is coming to Netflix and select theaters on November 19. Made through a collaborative filmmaking process, Procession is centered around six men (all survivors of child sexual assault at the hands of Catholic priests) who engage in a "drama therapy-inspired experiment designed to collectively work through their trauma."
- Season 2 of the acclaimed show How To with John Wilson arrives on HBO November 26. Read Notebook contributor Ruairí McCann's comparison of the show's first season with the films of Luc Moullet here.
- Michael Bay, a director of some interest to us over the years, has a new film: Ambulance, about two bank robbers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who take over an ambulance after a heist gone wrong. The film is set to be released on February 18, 2022.
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: Denis Villeneuve's Dune.
- It's officially Dune season: In an astute review of the film for 4Columns, Ed Halter describes Denis Villeneuve's latest as having a "certain DeMille-like, Bible-epic stiffness." Anton Jäger's equally compelling review for Sabzian likens Villeneuve's craft to that of Steve Jobs, and the film to "a well-designed machine."
- At Interview Magazine, Alana Haim and John C. Reiley discuss Haim's acting debut in Paul Thomas Anderson's forthcoming Licorice Pizza, and in a conversation with Guillermo Del Toro, Denis Villeneuve shares more secrets behind the making of Dune.
- Critic Fernando F. Croce reappraises the performances of Robert Mitchum, "the greatest Hollywood actor to ever pretend not to give a shit about acting."
Above: Chameleon Street (1990)
- For Artforum, Nick Pinkerton has written an essay on Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s newly restored film Chameleon Street, a "portrait of the artist as a young con, and the portrait of a con as a young artist." Filmmaker Magazine has also published an interview with Harris Jr. by Aaron Hunt, in which the filmmaker shares how he developed the fictional character of Doug Street (based on the real Doug Street).
- In light of the death of Halyna Hutchins, the New York Times has published an in-depth explainer on the use of real guns as props in films, and the expected safety protocols when firearms are on set.
- Speaking of magazines, you can now pre-order a new issue of Little Joe magazine, which features Ed Halter and Tobi Haslett on the films of avant-garde filmmaker Edward Owens, Elisabeth Subrin on the life and art of Maria Schneider, an interview with Shu Lea Cheang, and much more.
- Screen Slate's Kaitlyn A. Kramer writes on a new exhibit by Bruce Conner and Jay Defeo at Paula Cooper Gallery, which includes "collages, photographs, drawings, and other mixed media" by the two artists.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- The new season of the You Must Remember This podcast is all about Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, two members of the Rat Pack. The season aims to cover both Davis Jr. and Martin's careers in relation to 20th century attitudes towards race and masculinity, as well as "the intersection of the music industry and the mafia."
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Dash Shaw's Cryptozoo is playing exclusively on MUBI starting October 22, 2021 in many countries in the series The New Auteurs. For our Five Inspirations series, Shaw shares five things that shaped and informed the film.
- Florence Scott-Anderton's newest Soundtrack Mix is a musical celebration of India's parallel cinema.
- Mitch Kalisa introduces his film Play It Safe, which is showing exclusively on MUBI.
- Kayleigh Donaldson reflects on the films of Philip Kaufman's literary erotic trilogy—The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Henry and June, and Quills—and the director's serious take on sex.
- "The uneasy, inevitable twist-turn accounting of excess into art, art into money, money into excess again, is the film’s beating heart. " Ryan Meehan investigates the layers and artifices of Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch.
- In a chapter from the Viennale's new book devoted to Terence Davies, director Matías Piñeiro reflects on Davies' 1988 film Distant Voices, Still Lives.
EXTRAS
- Co-founded by Gina Telaroli and Carolyn Funk, Duelle Films is a production company that also produces other multimedia projects including podcasts, prints, and critical texts. Check out the online store, where you can purchase prints from the recent exhibition THE DARK WORLD.
- Film programmer and critic Steve Macfarlane (who wrote about The Lake House for Notebook earlier this year) has shared a Twitter thread of "various film catalogs / PDFs from the 70s/80s/90s," including catalogs and posters from the Black Film Review, the Heresies Film Project, and the Women's Video Festival.
- The famous Los Angeles house from Wes Craven's 1984 Nightmare on Elm Street is on the market for $3.25 million.
- A first look at Rob Zombie's adaptation of The Munsters, starring Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman Munster, Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily Munster and Dan Roebuck as Grandpa Munster.